


standstill

by icoeurus



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Angst, F/M, Flashbacks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-02
Updated: 2015-08-02
Packaged: 2018-04-12 15:02:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,194
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4483880
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icoeurus/pseuds/icoeurus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kaidan's life flashes before his eyes on Mars.</p>
            </blockquote>





	standstill

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written for Kaidan Appreciation Week 2015 on Tumblr.

A hand grabs his helmet and the ground disappears from beneath him, legs dangling in the air. The metal dents around his head and Kaidan’s biotics flare, doing nothing more than curl around his body. An alert on his HUD – his helmet’s cracked, air leaking out and he gasps for breath, for  _anything_  to fill his lungs.

Shepard’s yelling behind him, the Lieutenant’s voice breaking over his comm. Everything’s going too fast, he’s swung around and his head makes contact  _hard_ , pain rattling his teeth. His suit automatically dispenses painkillers and his biotics spark uncontrollably around him in time with the pulses of static in his body – Kaidan can’t stop them, the amp’s not responding and neither does his brain and agony seizes him, choked noises coming out of his throat.

_“Careful, son, you’re going to choke,” his father brings a napkin to his chin, wiping away the food gathered there. Kaidan smiles at him, a tiny kid no older than four with his crooked teeth and grabby hands._

_Hands that grab for his dad’s nose, suddenly ignoring his lunch and the laugh that comes afterwards is filtered, muffled without the extra airway and the young boy giggles with delight, hand being removed with some amount of difficulty. His dad picks the spoon up again and Kaidan groans dramatically, pouting at him._

_“Come on, your mother will have both of our heads if you don’t finish your food. Now, open up.”_

Red flashes in front of his eyes – alarms, sand - black creeps into his vision and _everything’s going too fast._

_“Mom!”_

_Feet run from him,_ away  _from him, and Kaidan can’t move, staring at his hands in shock. His younger brother disappears into the house, reappearing later with their mother, dragging her into the backyard. She’s in an apron and smells of sage but she keeps up with him, concern lacing her features._

_“Kaidan, dear, what’s going on?” But he’s frozen in place, mouth dry and throat clenching up. He didn’t mean to, didn’t want to, but looks up and sees how his younger brother hides behind their mother, even more now that Kaidan’s looking. He’s always wanted superpowers, to be like all the heroes in the comic books._

_But not like this._

_Not like this_ , he thinks. His body’s numb, unfeeling, unresponsive, all he can do is close his eyes and wait.

_A tense atmosphere. Kaidan can’t focus on the TV, attention drawn to the conversation his mother’s having with dad in the other room, voices being raised then dropping and starting all over again. His younger brother’s out of the house, gone to sleepover at his friend’s house and that’s all Kaidan wants to do. Leave the house, maybe Vancouver itself, his world feeling displaced altogether._

_A biotic – that’s what his father called him. He knows the stigma against them, hears the slurs and sneers coming out of mouths, mostly in reference to their alien equivalent. He knows that once you find out you’re one, you’re fit for the Alliance – not even the_ military _– and that’s it. He knows that any future he wanted is impossible now. He knows-_

_His parents come out of the room and they already know he was listening in, but he pretends to be interested in the cartoons anyway, fingernails digging into the back of his hands. His back is straight, chin up, just like how he was taught to sit. Just like everyone else._

_But then he sees the hero shoot down the big bad alien in the cartoon and everyone cheers._

_Everyone except for him._

He wants to think of a way out, wants to believe that all of this will end soon and that he’ll wake up all fine and dandy in the Normandy’s medbay but he’s being moved again.

_Years later and the walls are white around him, the light above him leaving him staring at his black sneakers to be able to see._

_Kaidan doesn’t know where they are, was rushed inside before he could read the writing on the doors and blindly followed his parents into the facility, the tall men in lab coats and security on every doorway telling him that it was more than a mere hospital._

_His mother leads him and his brother into the waiting room while his father checks him in, empty save for the three of them. His brother gravitates to a magazine, flipping through it but Kaidan stays in place, stares outside the window at the street he doesn’t know and his mother rubs his back, reassurances pouring out of her mouth._

_A woman calls his name a moment later and his father is waiting for him outside, smiling, but Kaidan can’t return it._

_They’re led down a hallway and the woman – a surgeon, he finds out – explains that he’s getting an implant for his biotics. That it’ll help him control them better. He doesn’t want it, though, thinks but doesn’t voice out his thought that getting it will only isolate him even further and nods._

_The room is like any hospital room he’s ever seen on TV, but he eyes the equipment, even more when they ask him to lay face down on the table. He hesitantly climbs on, but sits down on it, looking at his parents with uncertainty._

_“You’ll be alright, Kaidan. We’re just outside that door,” his dad smiles, placing a hand on his shoulder before they left and Kaidan hears it click shut before laying down, feeling something prick his arm before his vision goes black._

He tries to speak, but nothing comes out other than his ragged breath.

_He blinks awake, seeing the ceiling instead of the floor, and screams._

_The nurse beside him, prepared to greet him jumps, hands hard on his shoulders, but he can barely feel them. Not while his brain feels like it’s collapsing onto itself, hands moving up to cradle his head. The nurse calls someone in and he cranes his head to see his parents through the window, his father holding his mother back and his little brother covering his mouth, almost crying.     A man appears on his other side and fills up a syringe as the nurse holds him down and Kaidan shuts his eyes, doesn’t see himself biotically fling her across the room. But when he opens his eyes, she’s on the ground, holding a hand to her chest and he’s horrified, frozen for just enough time to pin down a flailing arm and empty the syringe into him, his body going limp._

He doesn’t even know what he’d say, anyway.

_Biotic Acclimation and Temperance Training._

_It was a bad idea from the start, an unsaid wariness wherever he went. The guards eye him and Kaidan has to pretend that he doesn’t notice their weapons, the way their fists clench when he walks by._

_Class – class is exhausting and the minute he steps foot into the room he wants to leave, Vyrnnus standing with distain at the front of it. The rest of the class file in behind him and the Turian makes a show of biotically closing the door behind them, the wood rattling against its hinges._

_It’s just another bullshit exercise, one that makes his muscles strain and sweat bead down his back. He hears someone breathing heavily beside him, but for his sake and theirs ignores it; they had learned quickly that sympathy wasn’t allowed in the training room. A body hits the floor and he wishes that that wasn’t a normal sound for him to hear, but it’s hours before anyone does something about it._

_Kaidan’s wiping a towel across his forehead when someone yells behind him, “she’s dead!”_

_He drops the cloth and like everyone else, crowd around the body – a girl, a year younger than him who wanted to be an artist. Someone presses their fingers to her wrist and there’s silence before they’re screaming because there’s no pulse, and kids who Kaidan wasn’t even aware left the room come back with nurses from the infirmary, a stretcher between them. Vyrnnus scoffs before making his way to the door, and that’s when the ball drops._

_One of them stands up from where he’s crouching by the body (_ corpse _, Kaidan knows, but he doesn’t want to use that word to reference to a teenager) and his teeth clench._

 _“This is_ your _fault. You killed her! If she’d gotten to the infirmary in time-“_

_“Then the human race will constantly be crippled by her weakness. Only the strong can survive,” and he left, leaving the class pointing daggers at his back._

_Silently, Kaidan wished he was the one that died. Then, a week later that actually happens, and he learns to be careful for what you wish for._

A loud bang as he slams into the shuttle again and he doesn’t know if his eyes are open or not because he can’t see out of them anymore.

_He comes back to the Alliance anyway, serving as a field medic instead of providing air strikes with the other biotics, good enough to decorate his uniform, to get the others to stop focusing on the L2 part of him and the rumors around BAaT._

_Before their first flight, the newly assembled crew of the Normandy are in a bar, laughing loudly as they share stories over pints and Kaidan’s sitting with his cup half empty when someone slips into the seat next to him._

_“Lieutenant Kaidan Alenko,” he immediately says, the phrase being repeated several times that evening._

_“Shepard,” they shake hands and Kaidan tries to ignore her coy smile, even though it only draws him closer. He’s heard that name before, but the alcohol blurs his thought process and for the life of him he can’t remember where, especially when the lights illuminate her eyes_ just so _, making him gulp. “I bet I can hold my liquor better than you.”_

_“Oh yeah?” He shakes himself and smirks, the bartender already setting out shots for them. They each grab one and he shakes his head before turning to tend to one of their crewmates. They both down it without hesitation. “By the way, I’m a biotic, so there’s no way you’re beating me.”_

_“Well, so am I,” another shot, “guess I don’t have to worry about being unfair.”_

_“I wasn’t aware there was fairness in drinking contests,” the drink burns his throat, but he’s stubborn and already has another one in hand._

_“That’s the only place where fairness exists,” she grins and clinks her glass against his this time before tipping her head back._

_Kaidan laughs. “Good to know that when I win you can’t accuse me of cheating.”_

_“_ Dude _,” a man pulls up on the other side of him – Joker, he recalls – and puts his hands on the bar top. “You keep talking to the XO like that, you’re going to get first dish duty.”_

_“Wait – wait, what?” His hand freezes halfway up his mouth, because he was admiring her earlier and still admiring her now and she stops too, grinning from ear-to-ear._

_“You didn’t know?”_

_“Ma’am, uh, no, ma’am,” he can’t possibly imagine his expression, because somehow her smiles grows larger. “Ma’am.”_

_He’s never heard someone laugh louder in his life._

The same voice that’s yelling, on the point of breaking and he thinks he’s falling.

_Shepard sleeps quietly, curled beneath him and her hair tickles his neck, but Kaidan doesn’t dare move. Ilos is another hour away, but he can’t seem to sleep, instead listening to his breath sync up with hers._

He doesn’t know when he’ll hit the ground, the distance stretching for miles.

_The Normandy blows up, the explosions silent in the vacuum of space and Kaidan’s frantically typing on his omni-tool, trying to connect to Shepard to no avail._

But he still feels his mother’s touch.

_His mother holds him close, soft words coming out of her mouth as he cries._

His brother’s smiles.

_He feels the hand on his shoulder, hears the proposal to hockey in the backyard even though they both know how it ended last time._

Still remembers the few shore leaves his father took, spending all of them with his family.

_He can’t tell him – he’s Alliance as well – but he knows anyway._

Still remembers  _her_ , with her coy smiles and warms laughs and-

_She’s alive. She’s alive and he saw her and something strong burns his throat to drown out the words said._

And-

_“Shepard.”_

_“Kaidan?”_

And then he  _doesn’t_ , because he sees her in a white dress and he’s standing across from her. He sees a red haired boy with brown eyes. A crew standing before him waiting for his orders. Cities rebuilt, scars healing over. Kaidan sees nations more united than ever and families reunited. A house overlooking English Bay that’s waiting for him.

Pain seeps into his mind and the pictures get blurry, but he can make out the Reapers, hopeless soldiers marching into their graves. Civilians forced to take up arms, children losing both parents. Buildings demolished, brusque ground forces sweeping the stragglers. A galaxy silenced as the Reapers go back into dark space.

He hits the ground.

_I don’t want to die._


End file.
